They don't often have composite classes, but we often have a mix of year groups because we have fewer children at each year level. (D)

They call it elementary school and we say primary school. After elementary school they go to middle school and then high school. We can stay at our school until we are 18, because we are an Area school. (D)

They change to a new grade level at the start of their school year each September.

We change to a new year level when the new school year starts in February. (D)

Community:

They have a community of 24,000 people and we have less than 1000. (D)

The elevation of their community is 850 ft (259m). Reefton is 198m above sea level (649ft). (S)

They have a 30 minute drive to get to a beach. We drive for an hour. (D)

Disneyland is a 1 and 1/2 hour drive away and most of their class have been there.

In our class Liam and Mrs McK have been to the Los Angeles Disneyland. (D)

Climate:

They live on the West Coast of America and their annual rainfall is about 14 inches (about 355mm).

We live on the West Coast of New Zealand and our average annual rainfall is 2200mm (about 86 inches)! (D)

Their summer temperatures range from 60-90˚F (16-32˚C).

Our average summer temperature is 25˚C (77˚F). (S)

Their winter temperatures range from 40-60˚F (4-16˚C).

Our average winter temperature is 15˚C (59˚F). (D)

They almost never get snow. Mrs Yollis can remember getting snow once. We might get snow in town once a year, although it snows on the hills around us. (D)

Mrs Yollis' class had skyped with 2KM in Australia and had learnt that they have magpies that swoop on people. They asked us if we have magpies that swoop and the answer is YES!

Iliana noticed about our school uniform. Mrs Yollis thought a uniform would save time in the morning. (D)

She asked about dairy farms, so Adam, Liam, Jonathon and Emily told her that the cows are milked twice a day, and whoever is milking has to get up very early in the morning (3-5 am). (D)

We asked about their pets. Nick has a bulldog, Grace had guinea pigs and Kristen has a cat. (S)

We met Ryan, who had left a great comment on our blog page back in September.

Where there any questions that you didn't get to ask?

We ♥ our skype session and think it was great to talk to everyone. (S)

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Mark Laurent is a New Zealand author. He wrote this picture book called 'Rufus and the Rain'.
Brenda read us the story.

Rufus told Wind not to bring Cloud, but it wasn't long before he realised that clouds are necessary to give shade and to bring the rain.
Rufus had to say something to Wind that is sometimes hard for people to say.

Do you know what that hard word was?

What happened when Cloud wasn't there?

Mark also writes poetry and songs. He sang three songs and we got to join in. This one was about the trees.

Can you imagine living in a world with no trees? How would that affect us?

Monday, November 8, 2010

We got to go into the Navy bus this morning. We watched a video about the navy ships and then we got to use the touch screen computers. There was even a little life raft, with a ship's wheel that we could play with.

The Navy is one part of New Zealand's defence force. Do you know what the other parts are?

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Today we had our second Skype session with Mrs Watson and her 2/3 class in Canada. We first Skyped with them in June, so it was so good to catch up with our old friends.

It was 9.30 on Wednesday morning for us, and 1.30 on Tuesday afternoon in Canada!

Today's session was mainly about pets. We didn't have our pets at school today, but in Canada Anna brought her chicken, Jordan brought her lizard and Silkence brought her Maltese dog called Biscuit.

Oceana told us about her 3 dogs called Ruger, Precious and Duke.
Mrs Watson told us that it is an amazing sight when Oceana takes all the dogs for a walk together!

Sophie also told us about her dog Lady. Lady is a cockapoo. Do you know what that is?

Fay doesn't have a pet, so he had drawn a picture of spiders.

Niall showed us a picture of his pet cat. Is it called Gallah, Niall?

From B4, Jack told the grade 2/3s about his guinea pig called Manny. No one there had a guinea pig although someone had a hamster.Paige, Emily and Jonathon talked about their cats and Liam talked about his calf called Sushi.JiaJIa said that if she had a pet she would like to have a monkey, because it's cheeky!
☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Then the Grade 2/3s told us about Halloween. They did lots of activities at school last Friday to celebrate, and lots of them went trick or treating over the weekend.
We asked what tricks they might do if there were no treats, but no one knew because they always get lots of treats!

We told them that we will have fireworks for Guy Fawkes on Friday night. Everyone said that they like Sparklers!

We had a great Skype session.
Thank you Mrs Watson and the 2/3s.

Do you have any more questions?If you didn't get a turn, what was it that you wanted to say?

The annual family challenge was held at school last night. Many of the fun challenges were based around the theme of 'Shake, Rattle and Roll'.
Among them were: deciding on items for an emergency kit; rank important NZ earthquakes in order of magnitude; and answering 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire?' type questions about earthquakes.
Watch out for these other challenges in the video: make a bird mask and use it in the birdie dance; get two team members across the floor staying on two small pieces of paper; make a little cart that can carry 3 marshmallows up and over a ramp; and bird mask hockey.
Thanks Mr Wright for organising another great family challenge!

Thursday, October 14, 2010

This week JiaJia and Tristan have made their very first glog. We hope you will learn something about the Kiwi.
They read and researched about the kiwi at reading time this week. I think they have done a great job, and they co-operated well with each other to get the task done..

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

We photographed our lunch boxes today because the P3-4-5 class at Innerwick School in Scotland made a post asking about school dinners around the world.
Most children at our school bring a packed lunch.
Some children go home for lunch, and sometimes children order lunch at the office, which is then supplied by a local shop.

On fine days we eat lunch on the veranda and on wet or cold days we eat in the classrooms.
After 10 minutes we are allowed to go to play if we have finished eating.
Lunch time is from 12.30pm - 1.30pm.

Our school supplies fruit to the classrooms so we have our fruit just before morning playtime.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Mrs Szalay's Grade 2/3 class in Ontario asked us about our Celebrations and Traditions.
We brainstormed this morning and decided that there are some days that we think are celebrated just in New Zealand, and some that we think are celebrated around the world.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

We say goodbye to Mrs Wistrand for awhile, as she is on maternity leave, and a big WELCOME to Miss Robinson who will be teaching in B4 at the times that I am taking Reading Recovery.
Miss Robinson is finishing her teacher training this term and I am sure she will enjoy working with the great kids in B4.

Because of a rise of numbers in the Year 0/1 class we also have Paige, Tyla, Nathan and Matthew moving into B4, and we are saying goodbye to Myah, Krystal, Adam and Tessa who will be in B3.
Now we have Year 1, 2 and 3 children in B4 and the ages range from 5-8 years old.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

At assembly on the last day of term the Year 6/7 ukelele and guitar players gave an item.
'Fish and Chips and Vinegar' is one of our favourite assembly songs.
We all usually sing it as a 3-way round. We think the group did a good job.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

We made patterning charts about legs on bees and spiders and kiwi, wheels on bikes and cars, people in classrooms and fingers on hands. After we drew our pictures we made tables to show the patterns of numbers.

Friday, September 17, 2010

This term each child set their own inquiry question to answer in their topic work with Mrs Wistrand on 'Children of Asia and the Pacific'.

Quite a few children wanted to find out about outback Australia, and we were lucky thatMrs W @ Harston in Australia, was able to help them.

Mrs W sent over some awesome Powerpoints for the children to use in answering their questions and we are very grateful to her.

Adam's cousin Gabriel also sent him a letter and photos about her life in the outback. She told us that she learns through 'School on the Air'. Her nearest neighbour is 100 kms away. Her best friend lives 5 hours away.

These are some of the posters the children are working on as they answer their questions.

We used popcorn this week to help us learn about volume.
We could only put 1/2 cup of popcorn kernels into the popcorn maker at a time, so the first measuring task was use different units to measure out half a cup of kernels.

To fill half a cup this is what we needed:

We also found out that a yoghurt pottle equals a half cup.

We cooked two batches of popcorn. The first batch filled the glass bowl.
The second batch filled the plastic bowl and some left-over went into the aluminium bowl.

Did we get the same amount of popcorn in each batch? Did the two bowls together equal the glass bowl?
Some people thought there was more in the two bowls on the left.
Some people thought there was more in the glass bowl because it was bigger.
A couple of people thought it would be the same, because we put a 1/2 cup of kernels into the popcorn maker each time.

So we measured each batch using litre containers and guess what?
Both batches of popcorn were the same! They each had just under 3 litres of popcorn from just 1/2 cup of kernels.

Now, what to do with the popcorn?
Luckily, the class had earned enough class points for a class reward.
So we had a pyjama party with a movie and popcorn! Yummy!

Last term we made a voicethread about Our Town.
Yesterday Miss B the teacher of a Grade 5 class in Thailand left a voice comment on it for us.
It was exciting to find out that Miss B visited New Zealand last Christmas and travelled on the West Coast.
We are looking forward to getting more comments from around the world.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

We have been lucky to have lots of traveling performers lately.
Today we had Kim Whitta presenting 'The Nutcracker'. The story was set in Russia at Christmas time.
We always enjoy having Kim because he involves us in the production.
Today, the Year 4 and 5s were the teddy bears doing a dance.
The Year 2s and 3s were the snowflakes.
Some Year 8s were the stationmasters for the Year 1's train.
Then the Year 7 and 8s were the cossack dancers riding their horses.
Finally the Year 6s were the spring flowers.

Monday, September 13, 2010

We love Duffy Books assemblies.
Today Kendra Cocksedge and Olivia Coady of the Black Ferns New Zealand Women's rugby team came to our role-model assembly.
They challenged us to think of any job that wouldn't require reading of some sort, and although we tried hard, we couldn't think of even one.
After we sang the Duffy song the boxes of books were handed out and we went back to class to enjoy our new books.
Olivia and Kendra came around the classes and showed us some rugby jerseys and Kendra's medal from the Women's Rugby World cup that NZ won recently.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

This morning we watched Elgregoe's 'You've got the Power' show and we were amazed by his magic tricks.
He had a really important message for us too, that we have the power to make sure that no-one in our school gets bullied.
Treat everyone the way that you would like to be treated. Say kind things and include others in your games.

There was great excitement at Reading time when our blog globe showed that 2 visitors from America, one from New Zealand and one from Australia, plus us, were looking at our blog page at the same time!